Farmland Rent Prices Keep Rising, How Can Farmers Develop Large-Scale Operations
According to a report by China Rural Voice's "San Nong Zhongguo," ecological agriculture around Dongting Lake is developing in full swing, but in some places, even those who want to engage in agriculture lack the space to do so. In recent years, some farmers who went out to work as migrant laborers have begun to show a trend of returning to their hometowns, and many of them choose to return to their old trade, going back to the fields to develop large-scale agriculture. But after returning home, many farmers find that their own fields are either too small or were already rented out in previous years, and everyone faces the awkward situation of having no land to farm.
In order to achieve their goals in their hometowns, these farmers can only continue to rent more farmland. As a result, everyone finds that renting land is even harder than farming it. Because more and more people are renting land, farmland rents are getting higher and higher, and in some rural areas there has even appeared the phenomenon of high-price "land grabbing." Some land rents have been bid up from 50 yuan to 500 yuan, a 10-fold increase.
The high land rents have left many farmers who have never left the fields their whole lives deeply worried. How could they ever have imagined that farmers would one day have no land to farm? Li Guoxiang, deputy director of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that in the land transfer market, ever-higher farmland prices will not only cause farmers to suffer losses, but will also endanger the entire country's agricultural production.
Li Guoxiang: Just like our country, which has a large population and little land, the amount of land is limited. If there are too many farmers farming the land, then it is bound to drive up the price of land transfers. This rise in the market price of land transfers should be seen as a reflection of market supply and demand. Of course, land rent prices will push up agricultural product prices and will weaken our country's international competitiveness in agricultural products. At present, the prices of our country's agricultural products have already hit a ceiling, so if rents are too high, it is unfavorable to the competitiveness of the entire country's agriculture.
Faced with soaring land rents, many farmers feel at a loss. For those who want to engage in large-scale agriculture, is there any way to rent good-quality farmland at a low price? Li Guoxiang, deputy director of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that there are actually many ways to transfer land. In addition to leasing, farmers should also learn to adopt multiple forms to develop large-scale operations.
Li Guoxiang: How to adjust rents to a reasonable level is indeed a relatively difficult matter, because the land transfer market helps optimize the allocation of resources, and land prices cannot be set by human decree. If we want land transfer rents to be relatively reasonable, then when we farmers develop modern agriculture, especially when migrant workers return to their hometowns to start businesses and develop modern agriculture, in addition to renting land, we can also use land share cooperation as a new form during transfer. On the one hand, we can make land transfers relatively smooth; after farmers become shareholders, they can overcome the drawbacks of continuously rising rents. At the same time, farmers who contribute land as shares can receive dividends from their land shares, and after becoming shareholders they can also go out to work, so farmers will be more motivated to transfer their land out.
In addition to leasing and shareholding, many places have also explored other forms, such as farmers farming for farmers, large-scale trusteeship, and other new forms. These forms are nothing more than ways to solve the problem of farmers having difficulty renting land, so when we farmers develop modern agriculture, we can adopt multiple forms to develop large-scale operations. (Reporters Liu Yuying, Jiang Wenjing, Ling Shu)